Are there insects in your dog’s food?

Do you know what is really in your dog’s food? An exposé by leading healthy pet food brand Pooch & Mutt has shown that Bakers, one of the UK’s most popular dog food brands, includes; crushed insects, known carcinogens, the controversial antioxidants BHT and BHA (which McDonalds and General mills have both stopped using due to public pressure) and potentially just 1% chicken in the ‘chicken’ recipe.

Shockingly, none of these ingredients are shown on the pack and are included in Bakers’ recently updated recipe, which was updated according to Bakers website because “We pride ourselves on listening to our customers and, since many of you have asked us to do something about this, we have” and despite the new packaging claiming “No added artificial colours flavours or preservatives”.

In the UK, pet food manufacturers have the option of declaring individual ingredients in their food, or declaring them by categories. Independent pet food companies, like Pooch & Mutt, tend to declare individual ingredients, as they want customers to know about the high quality ingredients that they put in their foods. Multinational companies like Mars (Pedigree, Chappie, Whiskas, Kitekat) and Nestle (Bakers, Bonio, GoCat) tend to list ingredients by category. According to the FSA this “allows for fluctuations in the supply of the raw materials used and provides flexibility for labelling ingredients”. In reality, this means it can be incredibly hard for customers to find out what is really in their dog’s food.

While it’s not news that many multinationals make ingredient choices based on profit over the consumer’s health, in most cases customers know that what they are buying is an unhealthy treat, which is consumed occasionally. This is not the case with pet food, as the ‘complete food’ should make up the majority of the pets’ diet and packs, such as the Bakers pack, contain multiple health claims.

Guy Blaskey, founder of Pooch & Mutt, commented, “There was a of lot of criticism of Bakers’ old recipe online, and it was good to see that they responded to this with an updated recipe. We feel that Pooch & Mutt plays an important role in helping customers do what is right for their dogs and to better understand what they feed their pets, and therefore demand more of manufacturers at all ends of the spectrum. We first looked at the recipe out of curiosity, as we delved deeper we were pretty shocked. The report that we have published at http://www.poochandmutt.com/bakers_dog_food/ is intentionally objective, simply linking the ingredients that we found out were in the food to independent information, commentaries and studies on those ingredients. However, on a personal level, I find it incredibly disappointing that a company would act this way whilst claiming to care about the health of customers’ pets”.

Crushed insects: Bakers includes a natural colourant, Carmines, made from ground-up cochineal insects. This ingredient is added to give the food a red colour, despite the fact that dogs cannot see red.

BHA and BHT: These are 2 extremely controversial, non-natural ingredients. BHA is a known carcinogen, BHT is banned in Japan. BHA and BHT are used in Bakers “to ensure that the food doesn’t go off”. They are included in the recipe despite a huge graphic on the top of the box that says “No artificial preservatives” because, according to Bakers, inline with EU law they are antioxidants rather preservative and can be classified as ‘additives’.

Just 1% chicken in the ‘chicken’ recipe: Even though the box says ‘chicken’ or ‘beef on the front, there may be as little as 1% chicken or beef in the food. You have to read the detailed explanation in Pooch & Mutt’s document to understand this.